


Before we fade away

by pizzaseagull



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Oneshot, Pining, spoilers for Chapter 135
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pizzaseagull/pseuds/pizzaseagull
Summary: Moments before the final confrontation, Levi is reminded of his promises.
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 1
Kudos: 80





	Before we fade away

**Author's Note:**

> _Too long a sacrifice_  
>  _Can make a stone of the heart_  
>  \- W.B.Yeats

When Levi comes to, he knows immediately that something is wrong. The last thing he remembers is choking on his own blood before swinging in to save Springer from getting eaten and getting his leg fucked up for his troubles (because apparently the universe is on a quest to destroy his body piece by rotten piece) before mercifully losing consciousness. He’s pretty sure he’s not dead, but he definitely isn’t awake, either. The blinding pain he’s expecting is there, but instead of hitting him full force it simply flutters in the back of his head, muted and subdued, like it’s waiting for him to do something before returning. _So not dead, which is good, but something is off._

He’s dimly aware he’s lying down, face up, hands on his sides, eyes still closed against whatever light is trying to shine into them. The colours behind his eyelids feel strange, distorted. Whatever it is that shines above him, he doubts it’s the sun. _Has he been captured?_ That would explain the unfamiliarity of the air around him. However, his hands aren’t tied and the air around him is silent and still, the space empty and vast, save for an ambient humming sound he can’t place. There are no tell-tale steps of guards, no languid breaths or choked sobs of others. Instead it’s like he’s suspended mid-air from his ODM gear, somehow detached from the world while still tenuously connected to it. The dichotomy between the detachment inside his head and the very real sensation of lying down are enough to give him a sense of vertigo he hasn’t felt since his early days of trying to use his stolen gear.

The ground beneath his back is not hard, but he isn’t lying down on a bed or grass, either. He draws in a breath and can feel the ground shift slightly under his weight, which is when it hits him, why his temporary confusion makes sense. He’s not used to it, no one is. Even after four years it feels just a tad foreign, disorienting. Levi runs the fingers he has left subtly through the fine grains under him, the sensation grounding. He’s lying on sand. He’s lying in deathly silence, under a cold, foreign light, in a pile of fucking sand.

He’s in the Paths.

_Figures._

Leave it to him to pass out and wake up in another dimension or whatever it is that this obscure prison he’s seen one too many times is called. The sensation is somehow even worse than waking up swaddled in bandages, crippled and blinded. At least back then he had known where he was at, bleak as it was. He had a concrete purpose, an immediate goal to be pushed towards as he always has been. But he’s on his own now, unseeing, unfeeling, catching his breath even though he hasn’t been moving at all.

It’s then that he realizes he’s not alone. There’s a gentle weight against his head as deft fingers card carefully through his hair, untangling the sections matted by blood. As the cloudy, confused haze begins to fade from Levi’s mind he registers the softness of fabric against the back of his head and neck, the slight warmth of skin separated by layers of fabric. His head is in someone’s lap. Even if there’s only one idiot in all of Eldia, Marley (and quite possibly the entire world) fearless enough to do that, Levi would know who it is regardless. Because of course it’s him, it could never be anyone else. For everything that has happened in the past four years, he’s been the catalyst, the force behind every action.

“Eren,” he grits between clenched teeth, relieved to find his voice in working order, “care to explain what’s going on?”

The hand in his hair stills but doesn’t withdraw (Levi ruthlessly discards any thoughts he may have on the matter). Levi can almost see the way Eren’s brows draw together in the way they do whenever he’s thinking about his words for more than two seconds. _When did he first make note of that? Why?_

“What do you mean?”

Levi cracks open his working eye in order to meet his gaze, observing how the green in Eren’s eyes is glazed over. There was a time when Levi thought he was able to see behind them, to something beyond that anger, but whatever it may have been, it’s moved out of his reach for now. Eren’s face, once unable to belie even the smallest hint of anger, is unreadable, his expression blank and unmoving when it once used to give him away so easily. It looks _wrong._

“Why am I _here?”_ he inclines his head to the vastness of the Paths, the dark skies and raining stars. This time the creepy girl-child isn’t here, at least; it’s simply Levi, Eren and the enormous nothingness he’s pretty sure would fit seamlessly between them. Between them and everyone else in the world Eren has pushed away in his idealistic zeal. But for some horrible, selfish reason, Levi would care less if he weren’t included in the group.

At least Eren has reverted to his actual appearance this time; his hair long, shoulders broad, infuriatingly tall (because of course he is). Or, at least, this is what Levi considers his actual appearance. Perhaps he’s wrong, and in reality Eren still is that angry little boy he saw earlier, nothing more than a scared child unable to handle his trauma and grief. An adult stuck in a childish delusion that hurt can only be fixed by more hurt, passing it around like a torch that never goes out. He wonders if anyone ever taught him otherwise, if the world ever gave him a chance to think otherwise. If that would somehow make his actions even a bit justifiable.

The answer is always the same.

He wonders where it all went wrong, when he lost any hold he might have had on the fanatic, violent child to this single-minded maniac before him, but he can’t pinpoint a single moment. Ever since that fateful afternoon in that basement in Shiganshina, Eren has been drifting away and no one had realized it until he had been out of reach. Or maybe he had always been wrong in the head and there had been nothing to stop the inevitable. Somehow that thought is even less comforting.

Levi wonders whether he would have been able to do something, had he had the courage to reach out.

It’s too late now, however. Levi made his choice, they both did, and these are the consequences. The Eren beside him is both a man and a force of nature, an uncontrolled storm they all saw brewing but couldn’t ( _wouldn’t?_ ) prevent. Perhaps Eren could have been different in a world without titans, without the discovery of Eldia’s grim past, hidden and shielded from the rest of the world. Levi supposes he’ll never know. He doubts he himself would have been all that different. He’s too old, his past too long, for it to exclusively revolve around titans and walls. He wants to think he might have been a better person, but that, too, is a lie.

Eren blinks, finally registering his question, and tucks a strand of dark hair behind his ear, still fiddling with Levi’s blood-crusted locks with his other hand. He looks pensive.

“I’m not sure,” he replies evenly, but then immediately continues, “We had time.”

Levi wants to laugh. _Time?_ They’ve had _four years_ to talk, to address everything they’ve vehemently denied even existing, but they never did. Four years to do something about this _thing_ in the air, about Eren spiralling out of control like an explosion they attempted to contain but neither of them did, and _this_ is the appropriate moment? Seconds before whatever climactic crash-course collision is rolling their way? Levi can think of a thousand chances they’ve had before this, blindly discarded in favour of ignoring the problem. They had time, but they wasted it. Yet Eren looks at him like he’s expecting a reply.

“Time for what, Eren? I think it’s a bit too late to start waxing philosophical. In case you haven’t noticed, things are coming to a head here,” he dips his head back against Eren’s thighs to motion downward or wherever the real world is in relation to the Paths. Eren’s fingertips move to smooth the creases forming on his forehead and Levi pretends with practiced ease that he doesn’t notice or care.

“I wasn’t planning on that,” he murmurs, voice bland and unassuming, “I just wanted to see you.”

“Again, _why_?”

Levi shuts his eyes against the blinding light from the tree-like figure fluttering in his peripheral vision. The ache in his head is still there and running circles around Eren’s thought process certainly isn’t helping it. He can feel Eren draw in a breath, muscles taut. Perhaps he doesn’t fully know, either.

Or perhaps he does. The idea is somehow much more unsettling than the former.

Because it’s so much easier, safer, to pretend there’s nothing there. That there’s no charge in the air whenever they brush against one another in the hallways or during training. Like their eyes don’t linger for just a bit longer. Like every shared moment, brief as they may be, doesn’t somehow register _differently._ There’s something ready to crash, to snap, and Levi’s nothing if not good at assessing threats, and this one is graver than anything he has ever faced. So, he denies, declines, vehemently ignores and stamps out every shred of affection before it takes root, only to find out in the end that he’s slowly but surely been choked by the vines the entire time.

“Do I need a reason?”

“Considering the circumstances, yes, you do.”

“I think you’ll be disappointed, then,” Eren leans backwards, his face and voice still intentionally, infuriatingly blank. Levi hates how he still takes care not to jostle him, instead moving in a way that minds Levi’s mangled body. He should probably see if he could sit up, move away, get back to a safe distance between them.

He doesn’t.

“So there’s no reason for any of this? You just decided to invite me over to nowhere to have a nice chat?” he hopes his voice is as stable as he tries to force it to be.

“What’s the problem? You’re unconscious, they don’t need you at the moment,” Eren’s tone lacks any intonation, and Levi can’t help but question where the weight would fall on his words. The hand has moved back to his hair, making no signs of leaving. Levi shouldn’t read into it, but he does. Eren is not an affectionate person, especially as of late, yet he keeps petting Levi in a manner _much_ too soft and careful to exist between a commander and subordinate, shared trauma or not. For some it might come naturally, but neither Levi nor Eren has ever been one of those people, and they both know it.

“I need to get back to my squad, not lie around doing nothing. This is a waste of time, Eren, and I can’t-”

“Do you want to go so badly?” Eren’s voice is still covered by that painstaking neutrality Levi regrets ever teaching him, but he thinks he can hear an edge of fatigue in there as well. The kind of hopeless weariness hidden in the voices of those who have chosen solitariness without realizing its consequences. He realizes he’s probably the first person Eren has properly spoken to in a while, definitely the first one to talk to him without an agenda. Levi’s never cared much for agendas, manipulation or ideologies. That part has always been someone else’s job, Erwin’s, Hange’s, Armin’s. He’s been content to follow orders and survive.

Levi has never been a strategist or a leader, instead he’s accepted his lot of being pointed into the correct direction, launched like a concentrated weapon of destruction. Because that’s what he’s been built into, the only path he has the chance to walk in his life. Eren, meanwhile, is equally a weapon, but one that was never properly harnessed, the untamed contrast to Levi’s controlled force. Perhaps that’s why he’s never been able to look away from the carnage around Eren, because he feels familiarity in that raw force. Not for the ideology, however. Those kinds of thoughts get beaten out of people in the Underground very quickly.

And Levi’s not a saint, either, measured and in control or not. He’s proven it to himself and the world, time and time again. He’s cheated, killed, hurt, lied, done whatever he himself needed to survive first, then to help others survive. But Eren is the first time he’s lied to himself. Thirty-eight years and he reached his limit in a shaky metal death-trap careening towards almost certain death, unable to let go of the idea of a stubborn, angry, hopeless man.

_He should just say what they all know: that there’s no chance for conversation, for a peaceful resolution. The only way out is to kill their comrade, because he will never give up once he’s set his sights on something, no matter what it is. They all know, they’ve all seen it. But nobody wants to admit it, they talk of negotiations, of making him understand, or keeping him alive. It’s a futile hope and he knows it._

_But Levi’s weak. He’s weak exactly when he should be strong, in the one way he’s never been allowed to. So he stalls, he lies to give everyone just a second’s worth of false hope:_

_“If we can kill Zeke first, will the rumbling stop?”_

_He allows it for himself, for just this moment. One fleeting moment of hope to do the one thing he has known he’ll never be capable of, Humanity’s Strongest or not:_

_Save Eren._

“I never said anything about wanting,” Levi replies, trying to sound calm, but his words only coming out as resigned, “it’s what I need to do, and you know it, Eren. You can’t act like the world outside doesn’t exist. This stopped having anything to do with _wanting_ a long time ago.”

Except that it hasn’t, because no matter how hard he tries to ignore it, Levi _wants_ something. He doesn’t want to dwell on it because he’s pretty sure what the answer will be the moment he stops to think about the persistent, cloying phantom pain somewhere between his throat and lungs, and it’s easier not to know. He refuses to feel any other way about it.

“I see,” Eren says and Levi hopes against hope that he doesn’t because he might break the glass-thin ice Levi’s been walking on ever since he woke up, “I doubt you’ll be here for long, though. I’m surprised I got to see you in the first place.”

Levi tries to ignore the sense of well-hidden desperation he feels in those words. Suppresses the feelings that well up in him at the idea that Eren actually wanted him here this intently, just for a fleeting moment of near silence. In spite of everything, there’s a splash of something soft and uncomfortable in his chest at the idea. He wishes he could claw it out, carve it up like he does so well, render it unrecognizable for what it really is.

“Well, I’m here now, so if there’s something you want to say, say it.”

Eren doesn’t reply immediately, instead he continues stroking Levi’s hair like he isn’t destroying the world outside and his existence alone hasn’t turned into a pure feat of terror. Despite knowing better, Levi doesn’t push him off or demand an apology, an explanation, anything. He’s accepted Eren’s decision long ago, feeling nothing but resignation for it, but it doesn’t explain why he’s feeling so desolate as he lies on the sand, gazing wearily at Eren’s faraway expression. He justifies it by his exhaustion. He’s allowed to. Allowed to look like a drowning man looks at the sun rippling on the surface they can’t reach. But Levi is apparently not in his right mind because he lets his good hand rise and trace the worn fabric of Eren’s shirt, lightly enough not to press against his chest, but alarmingly close.

“Aren’t you going to kick me again?” Eren chuckles mirthlessly, like he doesn’t understand or care anymore, “Or order me to stop? Surrender, give up, stop fighting? Come back home?” there’s so much bitterness woven into Eren’s words; bitterness Levi understands all too well. The idea of home was foreign to him to begin with (a life like his will do that to you) but finding out they had been nothing but prisoners all along had been a shock. Just fragile birdcage hung in a room throwing nothing but ancient punishment their way for sins they no longer knew. That revelation had taken any fragile sense of security Levi had gathered and blown it apart. Home for them was nothing more than a fortified penal colony the Eldians had attempted to establish a pitiful existence on, either terrified of existing or fiercely dreaming of the world outside, only to find themselves sickened and devastated at the truth. He can’t fault Eren for not wanting to return.

“I won’t,” he replies evenly and something close to surprise flashes across Eren’s face. It might not be what Levi wants, but it’s the closest thing to emotion Eren has shown this far, “You’ve made your choice, and I won’t begrudge you for it. I can’t tell you what path to choose, and at this point I doubt anything I say would make a difference, you’re too fucking stubborn for that,” Levi wants to flick his fingers against Eren’s forehead, like he sometimes did when the brats were younger and rowdier, but this Eren is far beyond touch, unreachable and unstoppable. Eren hums and Levi can feel the vibrations against his fingertips, which he apparently forgot to withdraw. Good job.

“Can’t say I’m surprised to hear you say that. You were always awfully big on making your own choices and facing the consequences,” his voice is lighter, now, like he’s reliving memories of better times, “I guess I never really understood why, until now. At least I know that whatever happens, I won’t regret choosing this way.”

Levi would very much like to argue the matter, but unlike Eren, he also knows when to give up a fight he knows to be pointless. Instead he sighs and lets his hand drop.

“Of course you wouldn’t, you idiot,” he sighs and hopes his tone is enough to convey his resigned sorrow. For another soul who got lost on his watch, if in a different way than the rest. Then again, he wouldn’t expect anything less from Eren. Even when he screws up, he manages to do it on a truly spectacular, previously unseen scale. Levi’s just counting the seconds until that fiery passion of his burns out and he crashes. Or dies before that. At this point there’s hardly any other option. He shoves away any ideas of the contrary, because he’s accepted that the situation is hopeless, keeps going because there is no alternative and he _can’t look back now because it might just destroy him and there’s nothing left so he might as well go on._

“I hope it’ll be you,” Eren says quietly, something terribly close to longing in his voice. His hand stills in Levi’s hair and moves, feather-light, to ghost over the bandages over his face. Levi is both grateful for the added layer and loathes it at the same time.

“Hope what will be me?” Levi asks, even though he knows what Eren means, because he knows it needs to be said, that they need to get it out in the open. It’s time to acknowledge the promise that’s been buried deep under years of working together, never forgotten but conveniently ignored, as if it were not the sole stone upon which anything else between them has been built on. He supposes there’s no time better than this, the last breath before the fall, the eerie calmness and Eren’s hands on his face like they’re stuck in the final scene of some grotesque play.

“I hope you’ll be the one to kill me when the time comes, like you promised at the trial,” Eren says, meeting his gaze, eyes still heavy and impenetrable and Levi realizes why he hates the sight of them as much as he craves it. It’s in those eyes that he sees the same heaviness, the same harshness, the same suppressed emotions that he sees in his own reflection. They are the eyes of someone who has accepted the path they’ve set on, no matter what. Someone who will never turn back. Someone who would rather die than stop fighting.

It’s not a surprise for Eren to say that. Levi has expected the request ever since the moment he and his squad had stood in the Paths and heard Eren’s vow to not stop until forced to do so. Giving them all an ultimatum, between humanity and a single person they’d fought so hard to save. Levi’s not a fan of his hand being forced, and it infuriates him that it’s always, _always_ Eren behind it.

It didn’t make it any less hard to swallow how at that moment he had been faced with the promise he had made years ago, fresh blood still dripping from his boots after he was forced to beat a child bloody in order to save his life. A promise he had never regretted, not even as he held a heartbroken fifteen-year old who had just lost his friends, even as he cleaned up the blood from Eren’s seizures the more frequent they got, with as much care as he allowed himself.

Standing in the Paths with the remnants of his squad, hearing Eren tell them they were free while Levi’s hands had been weighed down by a promise to the fallen, all he could do was to sink to his knees. He had been exhausted by the responsibility he willingly took, the losses that kept shredding pieces upon pieces out of him until what was left was barely recognizable. By the constant promises of freedom given to him in a world where he had never had any. By the mantle of Humanity’s Strongest when their hope had lost all sense. For just a moment, the first time since that rooftop four years ago, he'd allowed himself to fall, to feel the full force of the world, unseen for all but one person. But he doubts Pieck would have much to say about him. He saw the fatigue in her eyes as well as she stood by him, the only one unwilling to rush forward to Eren besides himself.

She probably didn’t feel the same, sinking desperation as Levi did, the same hollowness as his first instinct had been to stay back instead of running to Eren. Because no matter how much Levi wanted to keep him, he had accepted that Eren was gone.

“I don’t break promises,” he says because it feels right. He’d rather do it himself and doesn't wish to put anyone remaining of his squad through it. Levi will fulfil the orders he has been given, like he always has. Eren is no different than any other Titan by this point, just a demon of destruction and Captain Levi Ackerman might be crippled and on death’s door, but he can still kill a damn Titan. No matter that this is the once time he wishes he couldn’t, or at least, wouldn’t have to.

Levi wonders how and when exactly Eren became the exception, how he’s become the one thing Levi is reluctant to give up in a life where he has never gotten to choose for himself, to keep anything. Is it the fact that he’s all that’s left from his old squad four years ago? The only other one with memories of those four, giving him the luxury of not having to grieve alone for the first time in his life? He knows it isn’t much, that the rest of his new squad had followed barely a month later, but something in that short span of time felt like it had tethered him and Eren together on a deeper level. Like that ordeal had woven another strand between them, laid side by side with the promise made on the boy’s life.

It’s that promise that was written into every second Levi’s spent with Eren, training him, teaching him. Trying to build him up to withstand the responsibility he’s beginning to understand had crushed his shoulders before Levi had ever met him. He’d thought it would keep him safe, the vow to kill Eren if he ever got out of control (a vow he realized pitifully late he’d never even had the prerequisites to make – he doesn’t think Eren has been _in control_ for a long time). He’d counted on it setting them apart, a silent warning lacing every interaction, keeping Levi far away enough to maintain enough objectivity to carry out his orders. To fulfil his vow to Paradis, to Zackley, to the courts. To once again earn the trust he had gained from the Survey Corps. From Erwin and Hange and everyone else who has already died for this cause.

Levi doesn’t doubt he’d be able to carry out the deed. To kill Eren. But he’s pretty sure objectivity flew out of the window a long time ago. In moments of quiet, amused conversation, of silent teamwork, of learning to launch off of Eren’s titan form, orbiting him like a planet is forced to orbit the sun. Perhaps it’s an apt metaphor for them, Levi finding himself being compelled to orbit the sheer force that Eren has grown into with no ability to do otherwise – with no _desire_ to do otherwise, until now. Until Eren has spun so far out of any minute control he might have had, forcing Levi to wrench himself free to save Eren from burning everyone in his way. He foolishly hopes he could have continued.

Perhaps, in an ideal world, he could have done just that. Stayed by Eren’s side, learned him inside and out. Found solace in another person battered by the world from an early age, being forced to build their own illusions of stability when it was wrenched from them so early. But this is not a bedtime story, or a legend whispered through the ages, and they don’t. Instead they stand apart and pretend because it’s the only way either of them can move forward.

“Thank you, Levi,” Eren whispers, his voice less strained now, like a burden has been taken from him. Which Levi supposes is, because at least now Eren can die like he was promised he would. He will die, that’s for sure, whether it be in hours or only after the rumbling is complete, but Levi doesn’t doubt that Eren will die. The man he helped make into a weapon has reached his limit and it’s Levi’s job to take him down. At least now he can do it on both of their terms, even if their ideas of the timing are different.

Levi closes his eyes again, fatigue threatening to overcome him. He doubts he’ll be stuck here for much longer, the pain that radiates across his entire being gaining strength once more. He’s bound to wake up soon, and he tries to savour this muted version of pain before waking to the persistent, dull agony he feels across his face and his mangled hand. Before being confronted with a burning, rumbling world where all control has been lost to a single, angry child. Waking up to a life of war, again and again until one day it’ll stop, one way or another.

Time flows by in silent darkness, and against his better judgment Levi soon grows accustomed to the sensation of sand under his back, of Eren’s surprisingly gentle hands in his hair, on his face. Rationally he knows that he should panic, be on the defensive, stay on guard around the man threatening the entire world. But he can’t help but exhale, relax ever so slightly against Eren, and hate himself for it. He doesn’t need to be comforted, doesn’t want it. But he feels Eren’s fingers beginning to tremble and Levi thinks that maybe it’s for both of them, something like a goodbye. He’s pretty sure it’s all they’re getting anymore. The next time he sees Eren it will be on opposite sides of the battlefield, swords bared and an old promise on his lips, sentenced to go unbroken.

There’s a slight pressure against his unbandaged cheek, his bare skin, the slightest whisper of touch so ethereal he isn’t sure it’s even real. He doesn’t know what it is; lips, a palm, a simple press of fingertips. He wonders if he should even care, because it’s not as if it’s real to begin with. At least that’s easier to admit to than anything else, so Levi allows himself this second lie.

He doesn’t think Eren lets go of him.

When he wakes up again, he’s airborne with the ghost of touch against his skin.


End file.
